Carnival-SA (6 page)

“What’s the prize?”

Miss Pretoria considered him for a moment. “Status. To the victors go a choice of contracts; households with more status will bid for preferred males. Which benefits both them, and their mothers and sisters—”

Kusanagi-Jones didn’t need to turn to see Vincent’s expression. He hadn’t let his fisheye drop since they set foot planetside.

Vincent reached past him, leaning forward, and indicated the monitor. “You’re selecting
for
aggressive men?”

Miss Pretoria showed her teeth. “We’re not docile, Miss Katherinessen. And we’re not interested in forcing males to conform to standards that ignore what nature intended for them.”

She said it easily, without apparent irony. But the look Vincent shot the back of Kusanagi-Jones’s head had enough of that for all three of them and the self-effacing security agents, too.

They lingered at the arena for an hour or so longer than Vincent really wanted to be there, although he supposed it was beneficial in terms of information gathered—both regarding the society they found themselves contending with, and what Miss Pretoria chose to show them about it. Angelo, of course, watched the bloodsport with as much appearance of interest as he might have mustered for a particularly tiresome political speech. Even Vincent wasn’t certain if he was analyzing the technique of the duelists and finding it wanting, musing on the ironies of this open display of arts that on Old Earth would be considered illegal, or sleeping with his eyes open.

Vincent, by contrast, let himself wince whenever he felt like it. Which was fairly frequently. Eventually, Miss Pretoria chose to take note of her guest’s discomfort, and suggested she show them their quarters so that they could take advantage of siesta to get ready for the reception and dinner. The walk back was quiet and uneventful, though the still-increasing heat left Vincent feeling unwell enough that he was grateful it wasn’t long. He recognized the courtyard where they’d first emerged from the limousine by its colors and layout. The particular building they approached—if any given portion of the city could be called a separate building—had a long sensual single-story arch rising into a slender tower with a dimpled curve like that of a hip into a high-kicked leg. The tower was even shaped like a human leg—a strong, shapely one, with a pointed toe and a smooth swell of calf near the peak. An oval window or door opened into that small valley; Vincent would have liked to see a garden there, pots and orchids, maybe. On Ur, on Old Earth, there would have been flowers, great waterfalls of them growing up the wall. The swags and garlands of dead, cut flowers were another alien grace note, a funereal touch. They even smelled dead, sweet rot, although if you ignored the fact that they were corpses they were pretty. Miss Pretoria smiled a quiet professional smile. “We think the Dragons were fliers. That’s one of the reasons we call them Dragons; half the access points to the dwellings are above ground level, some of them at the tips of spires. It used to be more like four-fifths of them, but now that people have been living here for a hundred years, things have changed.”

A hundred New Amazonian years; 150, give or take, of Earth’s. “I was noticing the lack of plants.”

“Oh,” she said. “We don’t really—well, I’ll show you.” She gestured them inside, through a curtain of cool air that ruffled the fine hairs on Vincent’s neck. The doorway was simply open to the outside, air exchange permitted as if it cost nothing in resources to heat or cool. He bit his lip—and then lost his suppressed comment totally as they walked through the dim entryway and he got his first glimpse of the interior.

For a moment, he forgot he was inside a building at all. The walls seemed to vanish; he had the eerie sensation of standing in the center of a broad, gently rolling meadow bordered on three sides by jungle and on the fourth by the sunlit curve of the bay. A dark blue sky overhead poured sunlight, but less brilliantly. Vincent’s headache eased as his squint relaxed. He no longer had to fight the urge to shade his eyes with his hand; this was like the sunlight he was accustomed to, the tame sunlight of Ur or Old Earth.

“Better?” Pretoria asked, pulling off her shoe.

“Very much so.” He glanced around, aware of Michelangelo’s solid presence on his left side, and pressed his foot into the flooring. It was soft, living. Not grass, of course, or the tough broad-turf of home, but a carpet of multiple-leaved, short-stemmed plants sprinkled with bluish-gray trefoils. He gestured at the ceiling and walls. “This is…awesome.”

He adjusted his wardrobe so he, too, was barefoot. Michelangelo did the same, without seeming to have noticed anyone else’s actions.

Miss Pretoria placed her shoes on a rack by the door, and Vincent stole a look at them. He couldn’t identify the material. The security detail kept their boots, custom bowing to practicality.

“This is the guests’ quarters of government center. The lobby is yours to make use of as you please. For your safety, we ask that you do not venture out unescorted.”

“Is Penthesilea so dangerous for tourists?” Vincent asked. It had seemed tame enough on their two brief jaunts, and he was interested by how casually the local dignitaries ventured out in public. The culture, in that way, reminded him of pre-Repatriation Ur, a small-town society in which everybody knew everybody else. He craned his neck, looking through the almost-invisible ceiling, and watched some small winged animal dart overhead.

“Dangerous enough,” Miss Pretoria said, with a smile that might almost have been flirting, before she beckoned them on.

Somewhere between shaking Miss Pretoria’s hand and being shown to their quarters so they could get ready for dinner, Vincent started to wonder if he was ever going to hit his stride. Normally, he would have felt it happen, felt it fall into place with an almost audible click. Still, he had some advantages. Pretoria didn’t know how to respond to his relentless good humor. He didn’t rise to her provocation, and it set her back on her heels. Which was all to the good, because he needed her off-balance and questioning her assumptions. If nothing else, it would make it easier to keep up appearances for Michelangelo, who needed to see Vincent doing what they had come here to do:
the
job. The damned job, so important it took a definite article.

Angelo was restless again, fidgeting as he pretended to examine documents in the hours they were given to themselves. Vincent pretended to nap, his eyes closed, and listened first to the silence of heavy heat and then to the patter of rain on the sill of the windowless frame that looked out over Penthesilea. For a moment, Vincent felt a pang at the necessity of that deceit. And then he remembered the
Kaiwo
Maru,
the transparency of Michelangelo’s desire to bloody him.
I took the therapy
. It explained, at least, why Michelangelo had never tried to contact him, even through their private channels. They were spies, for the Christ’s sake. They’d kept their affair secret for thirty years; Michelangelo could have passed a note without getting caught. If he’d wanted to. If the job and the goddamned Coalition hadn’t been more important than Vincent. Probably the job, frankly. Michelangelo had never cared for politics, for all he’d been willing to sacrifice just about anything to them. That was fine. There were things that were more important to Vincent than the Coalition, too. Such as bringing it down.

He sat up, rolled off the bed, and—without looking at Angelo—began to putter around their quarters. The suite was halfway up one of the asymmetrical towers. A single bedroom, with a bed big enough for four; a recreation area; and a fresher so primitive it used running water. Vincent had never actually
seen
one, apart from in antique records. The walls had the same simulated transparency as the “lobby” of the building, although now they showed the dark jungle and the phosphorescent sea. Overhead, blurred stars glowing through the dying nebula. Vincent paused for a moment to wonder at that—how the city itself vanished, except the bit he could see through the open window frame, and was replaced by the sensation of being alone in a reaching space.

The New Amazonians must have adapted, but he found it disconcerting. It wasn’t something a human architect would design for a living space. There was no coziness here, no safety of walls and den. This was a lair for a beast with wings, whose domain and comfort were the open sky. Vincent grinned at Michelangelo, and nodded to the bed. “Do you want a nap before dinner?”

Michelangelo tapped his watch. “I’m on chemistry. And three months of cryo. I’ll be fine.” As if cryo were rest.

“Do you suppose the mattress squeaks?”

“We’ll find out, won’t we?” The smoke in Angelo’s voice was enough to curl Vincent’s toes.
All lies
.

“Besides, I need to do my forms. Do you want first turn in the fresher?”

Vincent knew when he was beaten. He shrugged and switched his wardrobe off, pretending he didn’t notice Michelangelo’s lingering, to-all-appearances-appreciative glance as the foglets swarmed into atmospheric suspension, misty streaks across his body before they left him naked. “If I can figure out how to work it,” he said, and walked through the arch into the antechamber, Michelangelo’s eyes on every step.

The fresher was primitive but the controls were obvious, the combined bath and shower a deep tub with dials on the wall, handles marked blue and red, a nozzle overhead. A washbasin and a commode completed the accommodations, and Vincent had the technology worked out in three ticks. He stepped down into the tub—there were stairs, very convenient—and set the dial for hot.

Lesa didn’t have time to go home and change before dinner. Fortunately, the government center was all smart suites, and she’d had the foresight to stash a change of clothes in her office. She wouldn’t even have to commandeer one of the rooms for visiting dignitaries.

She ordered the door locked and stripped out of her suit, leaving it tossed across the back of her chair. She placed her honor on the edge of the desk, avoiding the blotter so she wouldn’t trigger her system, and turned to face the wall. “House, I need a shower, please.”

There had been no trace of a doorway in the transparent wall before her, but an aperture appeared as she spoke and irised wide. She passed through it, petting the city’s soap-textured wall as she went by. It shivered acknowledgment and she smiled. Lights brightened as she entered, soothing shades of blue and white, and one wall smoothed to a mirror gloss.

House was still constructing the shower. She inspected her hair for split ends and her nose for black-heads as she waited, but it didn’t take long. The floor underfoot roughened. The archway closed behind her and warm rain coursed from overhead. Lesa sighed and closed her eyes, turning her face into the spray. Her shoulders and back ached; she arched, spread her arms, lifted them overhead and stretched into a bow, then bent double and let her arms hang, pressing her face against her knees, waiting for the discomfort to ease.

The water smelled of seaweed and sweet flowers; it lathered when she rubbed her hands against her skin. She could have stayed in there all night, but she had things to do. “Conditioner and rinse, please,”

she said, and House poured first oily and then clean hot water on her, leaving behind only a faint, lingering scent as it drained into the floor.

Her comb and toiletries were in her desk. She dried herself on a fluffy towel—which House provided in a cubbyhole, and which she gave back when she was done—and sat naked at her desk, wrinkling the dirty suit on her chair, to comb through her tangles and spy on her guests while she planned her attack.

“Show me the Colonial diplomats.” There was always a twinge of guilt involved in this, but it
was
her job, and she was good at it. Her blotter cleared, revealing the guest suite. Miss Kusanagi-Jones stood in the center of the floor, balanced and grounded on resilient carpetplant, his feet widely spaced in some martial-arts stance. Eyes closed, his hands and feet moved in time with his breath as he slid sideways and Lesa leaned forward, fascinated. She’d suspected he was a fighter. He held himself right, collected, confident, but without the swaggering she was used to seeing on successful males. As if he didn’t feel the need to constantly claim his space and assert his presence. She wondered if this was what combat training looked like on a gentle male, one whose strength wasn’t bent on reproduction and dominance. It suited him, she thought, watching his stocky, barrel-chested body glide from form to form without rising or falling from a level line. He finished as she watched, then paused, a sheen of sweat making his dark skin seem to glow in comparison with his loose white trousers. Then he bowed formally and dropped into slow-motion push-ups, alternating arms. Male arm strength. Which made it no less impressive.

Katherinessen came from the shower a moment later, naked and dripping slightly. Wisps of mist hung around him, and green, gold, and blue lights glowed through the tawny skin in the hollow of his left wrist. He touched them; the mist drifted in spirals about his body, and his hair and skin were dry. Even the water droplets on the leaves of the carpetplant ended abruptly, five steps from the shower door. He was older than she’d thought, Lesa realized. He was a ropy man, long and lean, the fibers of his muscles clearly visible under the skin, but that skin had a soft, lived-in look. He moved in his body unself-consciously. She thought he might be showing himself off to his lover a little, which made her smile. He could be anywhere from thirty-five New Amazonian years to fifty; if he were a native she would have guessed thirty from the sparse gray in his hair and his relatively unlined face, but the Colonials stayed out of the sun; he might be much older.

And that was without accounting for the OECC’s medical technology. She’d heard they could live into their second century in vigorous health. It worried her; these men were the equivalents of Elders, if men had Elders, and if the Colonial Coalition had any sense at all, they would be as wily and problematic as anyone in the New Amazonian Parliament.

And they were
men
. Men with education and resources and the power of a multiworld organization behind them. But
men,
half crazy with evolutionary pressures half the time. The OECC couldn’t
conquer
New Amazonia; they’d proven
that
to everyone’s satisfaction. But if it ever decided that what New Amazonia had to offer wasn’t worth the trouble and loss of face its existence created—and if they could find enough reasons to justify their actions to the Governors—they could destroy it.
Bang
. As easily as Lesa could lay down her comb, open the closet door with a word to House, and pull out her formal dress.